Hellequin Chronicles 4: Prison of Hope

by Steve McHugh

  “No, they all undergo a weekly psychic examination. Any hint of control and it flags up. I pay a lot of money for those examinations; independent contractors do them. It’s foolproof. Besides, there are always guards watching the guards. Anyone screws up and someone will notice.”

  “How long did Sarah work for you?” Olivia asked, moving the conversation back to the topic for which we needed answers.

  “She was a guard here for three or four years, and then she came to me with an idea. The head guard for Pandora’s security is Justin Toon. Sarah and Justin had this idea where . . .” He paused for a second. “Look, what I’m about to tell you is very confidential. I’m only saying anything because, quite frankly, having Hades as an ally and in charge of Tartarus is a lot better than not. Besides, Cronus running around fucks things up for everyone. But this goes no further. Agreed?”

  Everyone nodded.

  “It was a few years back, and Hera was starting to buy up land in London, something that concerned me. Her asshole of a son, Ares, created that Mars Warfare place.”

  “That was Ares?” I asked. Memories of the atrocities I’d seen there flashed into my mind. People murdered, experiments run on children. Mordred behind it all, torturing me, tearing out my memories that took me a decade to recover. And then, only by going back into that hellhole so he could torture me all over again. He’d murdered people I cared about, forced another to sacrifice her life to save mine.

  A dull anger grew inside me. Mordred was dead. But I knew he’d been working for someone who hid in the shadows. I’d made every effort to look into that, but it was a dead end. To discover it was Ares . . . he would have to pay for what he’d wrought. One day, even if it took centuries from now, he’d find me being the last thing he saw.

  I probably should have figured it out, but it seemed too obvious and brazen for even Ares to call a place he owned after the name he’d adopted for the Romans, Mars.

  “Have you seen that place? Word is, someone . . .”—Brutus glanced at Kasey—“messed up a huge chunk of it a few years back. It’s been pretty much unused since.”

  “Yeah, I had the honor,” I said sarcastically as everyone glanced my way.

  “Is that where Mordred took your memories?” Tommy asked.

  I nodded. “If Ares was bankrolling Mordred, then Hera knew about it.” I took a deep breath. “Keep going.”

  “Well, Sarah knew someone on the inside of Hera’s organization, although I can’t say who because I don’t know. The three of them got Sarah inside as a spy to feed back info to me about Hera’s operation. Sarah got noticed by Demeter, who introduced her to Hera, and then Sarah became a member of Hera’s trusted advisors.”

  “Hence the marking,” Tommy said.

  Brutus nodded. “I thought Sarah was in too deep, and I was apparently right. If she helped Hera get Cronus free, then I was wrong about her.”

  “Wait, why would Hera want Cronus free?” Sky said, echoing the question we’d asked earlier. “Cronus will try to kill her. He might succeed. Why would Hera want that?”

  No one could come up with a good explanation.

  “Maybe that’s the point,” Kasey suggested. “Maybe she wants Cronus to try.”

  “Your daughter is a genius,” I declared to Olivia who shared Kasey’s smile. “What if Hera does want Cronus to try? If Sarah was working for Hera, then they arranged for him to escape and go after her. Sarah gets Cronus to the right place for the attack to take place, but Hera would already know where and when Cronus was going to be and so, after making it look good, they kill him with the dagger so Hera can absorb the enormous amount of power a fully powered Cronus would possess. She then goes to Avalon and says—”

  “Look what happened at Tartarus,” Sky finished. “Hades has made it unsafe. It needs more eyes on it.”

  “She’d cause an escape just so she could petition Avalon to get control over Tartarus?” Tommy said and then paused. “Actually, that’s exactly how she’d do it.”

  “So Hera used the witches to get Cronus free?” Diana said. “Why can’t more of their kind see the sort of person they’ve thrown their hat in with?” Diana held a special place for witches, and they for her. Over the years she’s managed to show a lot of them why Hera and Demeter were not helping, but many more just ignored her.

  “Sarah knew Mara,” I said. “Sarah goes to Mara and says, ‘I need your help.’ ”

  Tommy shook his head. “ ‘Demeter needs your help.’ That would work better.”

  “Agreed,” I said. “So now Sarah has a group of witches on her side, willing to help her get Cronus away from Hades and his compound. Sarah involves the Vanguard to actually break Cronus free—although we still have no idea why they’d agree to something like that—and then uses the witches to get Cronus away from the compound and to the house in the woods.”

  “You still think Pandora might be involved?” Brutus asked.

  “Probably not,” I agreed. “But what if this isn’t Hera’s Kituri dagger? She’s not going to want anything to link back to her, just in case. So if Pandora let slip that she’s got a stash of stuff somewhere, and Sarah went to get it, there could be more weapons like that one out there. There’s no telling what else Pandora accumulated over the years.”

  “Then we’d best go see her. I think it would be best for your daughter to stay here,” Brutus told Olivia. “Diana, would you do the honors of entertaining our guest?”

  Diana stood and took Kasey’s hand. “I have a collection of weaponry and armor I think you’ll find very interesting,” she told Kasey, whose apprehensive expression melted in an instant to a broad smile. Unfortunately, I couldn’t say our afternoon was going to be as much fun.

  CHAPTER 27

  Pandora is housed in the very top floor of the citadel that Brutus calls home, the roof of which opens up to the outside with the push of a button. Her cell sits in the middle of the floor and consists of a large, apartment-sized block with the entire ceiling akin to a gigantic sunroof that opens on command. When both the roof and the ceiling are open, it allows Pandora some measure of the outside. There was a concern about her ability to escape, but it is a twenty-foot jump from the top of the ceiling to the roof, and she’s watched all the time.

  The walls of her apartment are made transparent from the outside. I don’t know exactly how it works, but it’s made of an almost indestructible substance that feels like concrete, but can’t possibly be. Brutus has never told anyone, except maybe Hades and a few at Avalon, who made it or how. All people need to know is that Pandora is monitored twenty-four hours a day by a rotating shift of twelve guards. Two guard the door of the cell; two sit in the control room; and two stand at each corner: one on the same level as the cell and one on a raised gantry that runs around the cell at a few feet below roof height.

  Pandora has not once tried to escape. Her cell has a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, and library, all of which are fully stocked with whatever she needs. The bathroom is the only room where the walls aren’t transparent, but then only a bath, toilet, sink and shower are in there, and it’s searched weekly, so one minor concession to keep Pandora happy wasn’t seen as a big deal.

  “There’s something you all need to know,” Brutus told us as we stepped out of the lift and made our way through the security checkpoints. “Only Nate can go in.”

  “Why?” Olivia asked.

  “He’s the only one who’s been enthralled and then released by Pandora. She can’t take control of him after willingly letting him go.”

  Olivia stopped walking. “Wait a second. Pandora enthralled you?”

  “About a thousand years ago,” I began. “Pandora had escaped yet again, and she was trying to make her way across Europe. I went to intercept her. Unfortunately, she enthralled me.” It’s a weird sensation being enthralled. It’s like your decisions to do anything are automatically what Pandora wants. The only time you get a piece of yourself back is when you sleep. That’s when your subconscious starts screami
ng that things are wrong.

  “What did she do?” Olivia asked, nervous.

  “She took me to a cabin in the middle of what is now Austria and spent three months with me there. She didn’t ask me to kill anyone, or try to kill me. We spent a lot of time talking. She told me about her life and how she was created and why she felt so angry about what the Olympians had done to her, just discarding her as a mistake because they were too ashamed to deal with her properly.

  “Every time she’s escaped since she was tossed aside like she was nothing, she’s created chaos: World War II, the Napoleonic Wars, and even the Black Death. She thrives on it. Like she’s punishing the world for what happened to her. Each and every prison we found for her, she escaped from. Even Tartarus. But for those three months, she just lived with me in that cabin. It was peaceful, and at the end she released me and allowed me to take her to Avalon, who arranged transport for her.”

  “That’s why they always send you after her?” Sky said. “Because she let you go?”

  I nodded.

  “Why did she keep you at all?”

  “I think she saw something in me she liked. Something she trusted. At least that’s what I choose to believe. She’s not evil, but she is dangerous and uncontrollable. When Hope’s in charge, she can be reasoned with, but with Pandora, it’s more about trying to minimize casualties.” Once Pandora enthralls someone, she can manipulate that person at will from anywhere on earth. The link she creates doesn’t have a time or distance limit.

  “You sure it wasn’t Hope with you in that cabin?” Sky asked.

  “Hope doesn’t have access to Pandora’s abilities. She’s just along for the ride, so to speak.”

  “Nate, you go down there,” Brutus said, pointing toward a set of double doors at the end of the corridor, guarded by two armed men. “The rest of you come with me to the control room. A word of warning: There are no abilities used beyond those doors, Nate. We use a similar system to Hades. It’s why the guards are armed with guns. I won’t make any exceptions to that rule.”

  “Not a problem,” I said and walked toward the two guards, who stopped and searched me, the second time I’d been searched since arriving on the floor. They found the dwarven Kituri dagger, but Brutus had already explained to them that I needed Pandora to see it, and they allowed me to continue through the doors.

  The cell was an imposing structure, even if it was transparent. I glanced to my left and right and saw two of the eight guards who were watching the cell itself. Both looked my way for a brief moment before returning their gaze to the central structure. The gantry was ten feet above my head, putting it just below the open roof. The wind whipped in from above, meaning the room was a good few degrees cooler than the rest of the building.

  Being inside a transparent house is a little on the weird side. Mostly because although the walls were transparent, none of the furnishings inside were. It meant that all of the kitchen and bedroom fittings were quite visible, as was the couch, TV, and every piece of wiring and plumbing. It was a very odd thing to view.

  Pandora was in the room closest to me, where dozens of book cases, floor-to-ceiling high, obscured two of the guards from her view. There was a small stepladder so that she could reach the books on the very top shelves, but she was currently seated in a red leather armchair, reading.

  The immediate urge was to shout out to her, but the substance that makes up her cell is the same as any normal house building material, and besides she couldn’t see me from inside the cell. I walked up to the door and knocked once.

  I watched as Pandora got up from her seat, and still carrying her book, made her way toward me, where she opened the door. “Nathan,” she said with a smile. “What a lovely surprise. Please, do come in.”

  I walked down the hallway as Pandora closed the door behind me. “Tea?” she asked.

  “Green, if you’ve got it.”

  “Always. It’s loose leaf too. Can’t be drinking that bagged shit; there’s no telling what stuff gets put in there.”

  I followed her into a sizeable kitchen and glanced up at the removed ceiling, giving her a view of the sky above. “How do you get used to it?”

  She followed my gaze. “We like it. Not as much as, say, being free, or even in Tartarus, but it’s a nice middle ground. It’s peaceful too, and we get lots of visitors. Usually dignitaries from Avalon or people who are looking to write things about us, but it’s better than being in a pit somewhere.”

  Pandora poured some water in a kettle and then, just before the water was at boiling point, she poured it into two cups with tea leaves inside. She passed me a cup and inhaled the aroma on hers. “It’s mixed with cherry blossom,” she told me. “Smells lovely.”

  “Yeah, it smells great,” I agreed.

  “You’re not here for a social call are you?”

  “No, I’m here because Cronus escaped from Tartarus.”

  Pandora started laughing. “Holy shit! The old man finally did it. Good for him.”

  “Not really, someone broke him out with the intention of killing him. With this.” I placed the dwarven dagger on the kitchen counter.

  “That’s ours,” she said immediately. “Do you know whose blood is inside it?”

  I paused.

  “Oh, don’t look so shocked. No one is going to try to kill Cronus with any kind of dagger unless it’s powerful enough to get the job done. And we know full well what our dagger can do.”

  “Blood magic would be able to tell us the species the blood belonged to maybe, but not the specific person. And I can’t use blood magic anymore.”

  Pandora’s eyebrows raised in shock. “When did that happen?”

  “A few years back,” I said, not wishing to elaborate further on how it had been replaced with my use of necromancy. “You sure this is your dagger?”

  “Yes, we’ve used it several times in the past, so it’s something we’d remember. Only ours has this yellow gem on the side, just under the hilt.” She picked up the dagger and turned it slightly, showing it to me. “It’s one of a kind.”

  “So, how did Sarah Hamilton get hold of it?”

  “Well, that’s sort of our fault.” She walked past me back into the library, and I followed without interruption as we both sat on identical leather chairs. “She used to work here, and we got on pretty well. She used to come and chat during the evenings. On one occasion, we mentioned that small cabin you spent time in with us, and how we used the basement to hide stuff. We assume she went there and took this.”

  “Anything else there I should know about?”

  “Money, mostly. Some old books, maps, probably a few old pieces of weaponry. Nothing else that presents this level of danger. We’re not even sure why she’d have gone to the bother of getting it.”

  I paused for a second. I knew that Pandora couldn’t lie to me, but I wondered whether she’d known that giving Sarah the dagger would cause chaos. Chaos that Pandora couldn’t be blamed for, but one she certainly would enjoy hearing about. “Sarah was also working for Hera,” I said, taking the subject to more immediate matters. “Originally, as a spy for Brutus, but it looks like she got into her inner circle, and from there she helped formulate a plan to help Cronus escape. We think Hera wanted Cronus to try to kill her to give her an excuse to get more access to Tartarus.”

  “That would mean the blood in the vial is Hera’s. We’d have liked to get hold of some of that. Can you imagine the horrible things we could do to her?” She smiled and a flicker of anger was noticeable behind her eyes.

  “The dagger was used to murder Sarah,” I finally admitted, after making sure Pandora wasn’t involved. “The blood has evaporated.”

  “Sarah’s dead?”

  I nodded and explained what we knew about Sarah’s involvement.

  “A krampus?” Pandora asked when I’d finished. “That’s actually quite impressive.”

  “She never mentioned anything about Tartarus or Cronus to you?”

  “No, never.
We usually spoke about books and old artifacts. In fact that’s why we were telling her about the dagger. She had a marked interest in it.” She paused for a moment and took a drink of her tea. “Cronus will almost certainly try to kill Hera. He hates her for helping Zeus start the Titan Wars, and even more for killing Zeus.”

  “No one knows what happened to Zeus.” It was a sentence I’d been finding myself saying a lot recently.

  “Do you really believe that?”

  I shook my head. “What I believe and what I can prove are two different things. Cronus needs to be stopped.”

  “We agree,” Pandora said, and she must have noticed my obvious surprise. “We don’t want anyone else but us killing that bitch Hera. One day we will get our vengeance on her and her evil fucking clan, and Cronus will not take that vengeance away from us. The same goes for anyone else who tries to stop us, for that matter.”

  “Do you know where Cronus would go once he reached England?”

  “He’s not going to go after Hera until his power is increased. He doesn’t plan on doing a suicide run. He’s not the type.”

  “Okay, so where does he go to get power then?”

  “A magic well?” she offered immediately.

  I opened my mouth to speak and stopped for a brief moment. “Oh, shit,” I finally managed.

  “We assume you didn’t think of that.”

  I was silent as I contemplated the implications. A magic well is a place where magic is naturally occurring in the environment. Where a sorcerer who knows the right runes and the right way of using them can tap into that magic and draw it into himself. The problem is that the United Kingdom has tons of the things all over the place. Most humans would just walk around such a place and say they could feel its reverence or that it gave them goose bumps. But sorcerers would be able to make themselves more powerful, albeit temporarily, by tapping into the magic itself.

  “Any idea which one he’d use?”

  Pandora laughed. “Seriously? We can think of maybe twenty places off the top of our head that he’d think were viable.”